Unseemly schism a body blow for boxing

AMERICA AT LARGE:Self-perpetuating power blocks ensure the farcical existence of rival heavyweight 'world champions'

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

– George Santayana

WE HAVE yet to see David Haye’s win over Nikolay Valuev. The day of that fight we were en route to Hartford for Dawson-Johnson II, and travelled to Dublin the following night, only to learn that nobody in Ireland had been able to record the WBA title fight because Sky makes it all but impossible to tape its pay-per-view telecasts.

Americans, 1.25 million of whom shelled out €45,550,000 to watch Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto a week later, find it incomprehensible that that fight was on free home television in Britain and Ireland while Haye v The Missing Link went out on pay-per-view.

We will thus reserve judgment on the latest heavyweight claimant, but it is worth pointing out that having three simultaneous popes is still considered noteworthy, even though it occurred some 600 years ago. In boxing it happens all the time.

Sometimes described as the Babylonian Captivity, in Provence they prefer to recall it as the Avignon Papacy.

In March of 1309, Pope Clement V, having fled Rome, set up shop at a Dominican friary in the south of France, and for the next century or so Avignon functioned as the Holy See. (Edicts by Clement and his successors were issued with a “Rome” dateline; in the liberal interpretation of the Avignon Popes, some of whom would later be disparaged as Antipopes, Rome was considered to be wherever the Pontiff happened to be.)

Given the constant political turmoil in the Eternal City, this system functioned fairly efficiently for almost 70 years. Then in 1378, Pope Gregory XI, who had travelled to Rome hoping to patch things up with the boys there, died at the Vatican, which is when things started to get really silly.

Unable to agree on a successor, the Sacred College in Rome elected an Italian, who became Urban VI, while the French-dominated College of Cardinals elected Clement VII, who continued to rule from Avignon.

Both papal claimants died in office and were succeeded, respectively, by Popes Gregory XII and Benedict XIII. Gregory and Benedict somewhat exacerbated what had then become known as the Great Western Schism by excommunicating one another – sort of the 15th century version of stripping one another of their titles. In response to this crisis, the Council of Pisa was convened in 1409. Declaring both titles vacant, the council named a new pope, Alexander V, which, needless to say, did not sit well with either Gregory XII or Benedict XIII.

Now there were three Popes, each claiming to be the lineal heir to St Peter. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous in your life?” we were asked.

As a matter of fact, we had. How about three men each claiming to be the heavyweight champion of the world?

Although there had previously been championship claimants generally considered the boxing equivalent of Antipopes, what was technically the first three-way split of the heavyweight title didn’t occur until the late 1960s.

After Muhammad Ali was stripped of both his title and his licence to box, the NBA (the forerunner of today’s WBA) conducted an elimination tournament which produced Jimmy Ellis as champion, while New York (and then Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and a few other states) recognised Joe Frazier.

The World Boxing Council continued to recognise Ali, but back then hardly anyone, least of all American boxing commissions, cared what the WBC thought.

In that pre-Jose Sulaiman era, the organisation, which had been established in 1963, didn’t have enough clout to persuade a single jurisdiction to licence Ali to box, so the WBC’s claim was hollow.

Frazier’s win in the 1971 “Fight of the Century” reunified the title, and it remained thus when George Foreman beat Frazier and Ali beat Foreman.

Today Sulaiman will insist the WBC never stripped Ali, which is technically true: rather, Sulaiman stripped Leon Spinks for fighting a rematch against Ali, meaning that in Ali’s third go-round with the title he was an Anti-champ in the eyes of the WBC.

When Clement V, the original Avignon Pope, died in 1314, the College found itself deadlocked in choosing a successor. Under growing pressure to make some white smoke happen, and fast, the body eventually settled on a compromise candidate.

The investiture of the 72-year-old Bishop of Avignon as Pope John XXII was considered a harmless choice, since, given the life expectancy at the time of the Black Death, his tenure didn’t figure to last long. But the Pontiff lived another 18 years, during which power was consolidated at the Palais du Papes.

Delegates to the WBC convention probably didn’t realise that they were creating a president-for-life when they voted him into office back in 1975, but Sulaiman has outlasted three popes, seven presidents of the US and seven presidents of Mexico.

During the Babylonian Captivity at least two Avignon Popes – Urban V in 1367 and the aforementioned Gregory XI – travelled to Rome in the hope of a rapprochement that would reunify Christendom.

The past quarter-century has also seen two short-lived reunifications of the heavyweight title. Mike Tyson acquired his titles one at a time, and all three were passed along to Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe. Bowe dumped the WBC belt in a garbage can rather than defend against the WBC mandatory, Lennox Lewis.

Lewis also briefly held three titles after beating Holyfield, but gave up the WBA version rather than face its mandatory, John Ruiz. History should not absolve Lewis of responsibility for creating a situation that eventually inflicted Ruiz, Valuev, Ruslan Chagaev and now David Haye on the heavyweight world.

The lavish tastes of Pope Clement VI, the fourth of the French-based pontiffs, resulted in the Avignon Papacy running up annual expenses 10 times those of the king of France. This, in turn, forced a correspondingly scandalous increase in papal taxes to stave off bankruptcy.

In another eerie historical parallel, almost three decades back Jose Sulaiman was indicted by the Mexican government for attempting to illegally sell archeological treasures smuggled out of the country. It’s probably just a coincidence, but the name of Clement’s successor was precisely the same as Jose’s plea, which is to say: Innocent.

Despite the odd scandal, not only has Sulaiman been repeatedly re-elected, but on two occasions he has ram-rodded through the investiture of his personal choice as heavyweight champion of the world, despite rather persuasive evidence that Vitaly Klitschko probably wasn’t even the best heavyweight in Ukraine.

When Klitschko, citing injury, pulled out of several scheduled defences in 2004, Sulaiman obligingly covered the situation by having Vitaly declared “Champion in Recess”, and when the fighter subsequently announced his “retirement”, Jose greased the skids for his return by proclaiming him “Champion Emeritus”.

Rejected by the Pisa compromise and abandoned by even the French clergy, Benedict XIII was forced to flee Avignon, and lived out his days as an exile in Spain.

“He died forgotten,” says our guidebook from the Palais du Papes, “in 1423, aged 94, still convinced he was the legitimate pope.”

Or, at the very least, the Champion in Recess. And you thought all they stole in this part of the world was soccer games?